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Persia is 7,000 years old and will fight to survive.

Iran, in its former incarnation as Persia, created the world's first empire, produced titanic figures like Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, and is one of the great fonts of world culture.

If it was in the interest of Rome to extend her conquests towards the East, and to enter on the inheritance of Alexander the Great there in all its extent, the circumstances were never more favourable for doing so than in the year 716.

As the Persians wrote very little about how they ran their affairs, the Greek propaganda of the 5th century B.C. has for centuries gone virtually unchallenged - indeed, for Edward Said, it was the beginning of Europe's long habit of misunderstanding and ill-informed contempt of the Middle East.

In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, waxed powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without.

For me, I do not wish to build an empire.

I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.